


A Day in the Sun

by ferggirl



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-26
Updated: 2014-03-26
Packaged: 2018-01-17 03:07:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1371646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferggirl/pseuds/ferggirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Jemma Simmons and Grant Ward have met once before that moment on the cargo ramp, on a sunny day two years earlier in Rome. How will the memories of that one perfect day shape their relationship on the Bus? </p><p>(Canon parallels for the Pilot and FZZT)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Something about the tall silhouette conversing with Coulson on the ramp of the loading dock is giving her shivers. And a craving for  _suppli_. 

Rome had been a surprise getaway - a last minute girl’s trip, with no Fitz tagging along - before her reassignment to the lab in the Midwestern United States made such trips untenable. She’d gone with her cousin, and two friends from university. They’d lounged at the Pantheon, found an amazing gelateria, and danced every night. 

Except the last one. They’d been out to breakfast, standing at a bar and downing their cappuccinos like Romans, when tall, dark and handsome had walked through the door.

He wasn’t Italian, there was none of the forwardness or charm of the dark haired men they’d been flirting with for the last week. But even if his reserve cried American, his accent when he ordered was flawless.

Jemma had caught his eye accidentally and looked away with a flush, trying not to get too caught up in how his tight black pants and that leather jacket outlined what was clearly a body worth staring at for long periods of time.

Her cousin had nudged her and nodded back in his direction, even as she herded the other two over to a table and left Jemma standing alone with a wink.

He was looking at her. Staring, even. 

She’d thrown caution to the wind because, really, it was her last day in Italy and she was wearing her new Italian flats and her favorite skinny jeans and why the hell not. 

"I never remember how to order the right pastry," she admitted with a smile. He sat down beside her and waited for his coffee to arrive.

"You did just fine, pointing and saying  _questo._ " He spoke English with an American accent and just the hint of a smile.

They did the little dance of the tourist - are you here long? just arrived. just leaving. what should I see? well there’s this place… and just like that, she was waving to her friends and walking out the door with him, the Italian sunshine exaggerating her excited flush as they headed for Castel Sant’Angelo. 

They wandered. It was one of those stupidly easy romantic days where the music isn’t cheesy and the jokes are always funny, and when his hand brushed her hair out of her face on the bridge to Isola Tiberina it lingered there and the kiss wasn’t a surprise but the natural next step.

It was a great kiss, though. He’d hoisted her up onto the side of the bridge and she’d squealed and he’d looked very serious when he’d said, “Don’t worry. I won’t let you fall.”

Then there was more kissing and she stopped worrying in general.

They got wine in Trastevere, and watched the sun go down over the ancient city. When his phone rang, she looked at the clock on the wall of the restaurant and it was over. 

She had a flight to catch. He had a job to do.

He kissed her one more time when he left her in front of her hotel. 

She didn’t offer her number, and he didn’t tell her his name. It was just easier that way. 

It has been almost two years, and she still dreams of that day now and then. 

How odd that she should think of it today. Agent Grant Ward - because that’s who this must be - seems quite the stuffed shirt from the declassified bits of his file. Nothing like her American in Rome. 

Then he turns up the ramp and Jemma stops breathing. 

When her brain starts working again he is asking for them. Fitz and Simmons.

 _Two years._ And he looks just the same. But surely he doesn’t remember her. 

Before he has a chance to look at her closely, she dives in with some chatter and a cheek swab, and prays Fitz doesn’t notice her brief hesitation. 

Ward seems sour and unwilling to be here. But his eyes follow her, asking a question she’s not ready to answer.

Not on their first day.


	2. Chapter 2

He likes to pretend he knew immediately. After all, he’s a specialist, trained to remember faces, to identify threats and deal with them. Of course he knew deep down. 

But the truth is that it takes Grant Ward a few weeks. There’s something that eats at him when she’s in the room, something that he works hard to ignore even as he watches her go about her work. 

He has a job to do, and with each mission he likes his team more and more, so he doesn’t let the strange longing get in his way.

It’s not until he hears her joking with Skye in broken Italian that it finally clicks. 

Rome. Two years ago. His one perfect day.

He’d been stuck in the Eternal City for 24 hours, cooling his heels between missions, when he’d run into the pretty British girl over coffee. 

He was already under strict orders to act like a tourist until SHIELD could secure his exit from Italy. And when she looked back over at him, there was a challenge in those pretty brown eyes. 

Grant never could resist a challenge. 

They chatted about pastries, and Rome, and he was on the verge of asking her name when she shook her head.

"Let’s not," she’d said with a smile. "Let’s just enjoy today."

So for the first time in forever, he didn’t have to lie to a woman. 

He’d run dozens of missions in the cobblestone streets of Rome, and knew it intimately, but he let her lead. She took winding side streets, stuck to the river, and chose landmarks that most bypassed on their way to the Colosseum or the Vatican. She was brilliant and enthusiastic, spouting obscure scientific facts about Roman architecture and ancient warfare. He almost kissed her when she demonstrated the proper use of an arrow slit at Castel Sant’Angelo.  

Grant was not a people person. He worked alone, and was never first choice for seduction or diplomacy.

But there was something about her that was easy for him. Easy to read when she was ready to move on, easy to make her laugh when he had never mastered that particular skill, easy to stare as she stood in the warm summer breeze, her brown hair a cloud around her face. 

Kissing her smiling lips was not easy. He was hunched over and she was on her toes, and so he hoisted her up to the side of the bridge for better access.

Her protests were laughing, but she clung to the concrete, so he put a hand behind her back and promised not to let her fall. 

The second kiss was different. With her up at his level, they came together as equals, and she stole his breath and made his head spin. 

When they wandered into Trastevere, he slipped his hand around hers and just savored the feeling of her fingers interlacing with his own. 

Even the end was easy. When his phone rang with instructions for his extraction, she smiled and said it was time for her to get back anyway.

"I’ve a plane to catch, after all."

They didn’t cling to each other on the walk back. Her hand sat in his like it belonged there, and when he bent to kiss her outside her hotel it was with no regrets.

Those came later.

A month later, when Grant stares at the hotel’s website and itches to call and ask after the group of four young British women who stayed recently. 

Six months later, when his mission goes wrong and he has to try to blend in and he sits next to a woman with brown hair. But her eyes are green and distant and she looks at him with calculating interest instead of warmth. He kisses her because it provides the cover he needs, but he dreams of Rome that night back at the Hub.

A year later, when his little brother had calls him to check one last time that he doesn’t have a plus one for the wedding in October. 

He regrets that easy ending plenty in those moments.

But he’s a professional, so he puts the memories away. She is somewhere being brilliant and normal and that’s not the life he signed up for.

Until Jemma Simmons catcalls Skye modeling her new dress with absurd Italian compliments.

"Belissima! Ciao bella! Che carina!"

When the memories come back, they do so with a vengeance. He makes some absurd dig at Fitz and leaves the lab as fast as he can. 

How could he not have seen it - seen  _her_?

Jemma, who’s so easy to be around. Who works with enthusiasm and brilliance and whose smile can light up the entire plane. 

He’s sitting on his bunk, eyes closed, leaning against the wall when she knocks on his door.

"Ward? Fitz said you seemed a bit more shirty than usual, and I just wanted-"

"You speak Italian?" He opens his eyes to watch her reaction. He needs to know if she knows.

Her eyes widen, and she bites her lower lip in embarrassed consternation. She looks caught out.

That’s a yes, then. 

It stings, to know that she recognized him and didn’t say anything. It may have been his perfect day, but apparently it was not hers.

"I’m fine, Simmons, just need a break from the noise. Close the door on your way out, would you?"

He closes his eyes again and listens as she hesitates, then leaves. It’s better this way. No need to embarrass them both with ancient history.

Still, that hesitation haunts him.


	3. Chapter 3

Jemma never meant for this to go on indefinitely. She had careful plans to mention that day, at some future moment, when they were more comfortable and it would be easy to laugh off and move past. 

Then she realized that she liked him, this stuffy spy who didn’t want a team but would kill anyone who threatened his. Even if she’d never met the man in Rome, she would have liked Grant Ward.

She had started to wonder if it was worth ruining a perfectly nice working friendship with a two-year-old confession that they’d shared a really fantastic kiss once in the hot Italian sun.

Now she stands outside his bunk, stares at the closed door, and realizes that moment has come and gone. She’s too late. 

******

There’s a difference in him after that night. If she hadn’t been sure that his question -  _you speak Italian?_  - had been an admission, she would have known by the change in his eyes.

When she catches them now, they’re not questioning. They’re shuttered. And sometimes she thinks they’re a little bit sad.

She could brush the memories aside with a frustrated huff when she thought he didn’t recognize her. Now she finds it harder and harder to look away from his mouth, his eyes, his far-too-rare smile. Because she knows he remembers pressing that mouth to hers.

But she is a damn professional, and she covers with friendly chatter, which he always answers pleasantly, and teasing, which he awkwardly returns, and she doesn’t let herself shy away from touching him when she has to. He doesn’t either.

He never mentions it again.

Jemma’s not sure how to interpret this. Because if he remembers, but doesn’t bring it up, is it because he’s unhappy or because he thinks she is?

Is there some confusing third option that would only occur to an emotionally constipated super spy with perfect hair?

She takes her frustration out in a frenzy of work and intensifying mockery, like a grade-school child. Skye and Fitz are enthusiastic participants, and Ward really does leave himself wide open with his prickly by-the-book operations persona.

He comes in at the tail end of her impersonation and she still has the night-night gun in her hand and for a minute she can’t breathe because she might be frustrated but she’s not cruel. But he summons the three of them with no suspicion, just those shuttered eyes that she doesn’t understand.

Dammit. 

So she pushes back, looking for a reaction. She tells him, biting back a smile, that they’ve fixed the gun. It was a stray round. Should be fine now.

He does his silly operations stance, and she has to fight a laugh because does he not realize that the human ability to discern differences in weight is never sensitive enough to pick up on such things? Well, almost never. 

Then he  _looks_ at her.

And just like that, he’s agreeing that it’s fine and the others are biting back laughs, and she has no idea what he’s thinking.

******

Grant puts it aside. He’s not going to let it influence how he treats her going forward. That would be childish, to sulk and stare. 

Although he does catch himself staring, sometimes. She has a distracting tendency to be both brilliant and interesting, and there’s something about the curve of her jaw when she turns to address one of the other team members that has his own clenching.

Of course he hears them doing impressions of him. He takes a minute, outside the lab, to compose himself and wipe the amusement from his face. And then the minx widens her eyes and hands that gun to him, claiming it’s fixed. 

Stray round, his ass. It’s the exact same feel as the gun he held a few minutes earlier. 

He turns to tell her that, but she’s so proud of her joke. Her eyes are brimming with the secret she thinks she’s keeping, and her teeth are biting her lip and he’s  _tired_  of being a boring ass.

Once this case is over he’s going to talk to her. Maybe it wasn’t her perfect day, but it was his. And he wants to know if he has a chance at doing it again.

Then it all goes to hell. 

They figure out that she’s been exposed with time. Not lots of it, but maybe enough for her to save herself. Grant closes himself in the conference room, unable to loom desperately, helplessly in the cargo bay as Jemma and Fitz work against hope and probability. Skye joins him, and it spills out. 

“I wanted it to be a person. Some super-powered psychopath, someone I can hurt, someone I can…punish…that I can do.”

He wonders if Skye knows. She and Jemma are close - maybe they’ve talked about it. About him. 

But she doesn’t say anything, just joins his miserable watch. 

******

When the cargo doors open, he moves on instinct. His mind is slow to keep up with his physical reflexes as he takes the stairs three at a time, but it gets there. 

She’s given up on herself, and she’s trying to save them all.

Fitz is struggling with a chute and yelling “she jumped” and “it worked” and thrusting the anti-serum into one hand as he grabs the chute with the other.

This, he can do.

It’s a matter of precision, of air resistance and wind speed and he finds her, windmilling through the air, and his heart starts beating again.

She’s terrified and determined, and he turns her in midair so he can hang onto her before he gives her the anti-serum. He hooks her to his chute and their fall slows.

He holds her as she detonates. The electric blue pulse arcs across the sky with an ominous crackle. When it’s over, and she’s dead weight in his arms, he frantically checks for a pulse.

It’s strong and steady under his thumb. 

They hit the water with some force, and he inflates the life raft that comes standard in a SHIELD chute.

Then he starts worrying about what he’s going to say. 

******

When she comes to, cradled in his arms and confused by the rocking sensation, he’s smiling with relief. 

"Hi."

Her heart does a funny jump/flutter thing, and she looks away. 

They’re sitting on a small raft. In the middle of the ocean. 

"Oh my  _god_ ,” she says breathlessly. Suddenly she doesn’t want to talk about Rome. ”You jumped out of that plane after me.”

"We needed to talk."

"You  _jumped_  out of a  _plane_.”

He sobers. “And I’d do it again. We can’t lose you. Not the team. Not Fitz. And not… not me.”

"The anti-serum might not have worked."

"It did."

"I was protecting the team."

"And I was protecting you. That’s my job," he says. She holds his gaze for a moment, and his eyes are fierce, the shutters gone. "Not to mention I made a promise once."

"What?"

He looks a little surprised at himself, and hesitant, so unlike the Grant Ward she’s come to know. 

"There was this very lovely girl on a bridge in Rome," he says finally.

She laughs. Of course they’re going to talk about this here. Now. In the middle of the ocean having just missed dying by an alien virus and a 30,000 foot fall. 

Might as well. 

"This sounds like quite the story," she says. "I have one too, you know. This very presumptuous man with an outrageously good grasp of Italian almost tossed me over the edge of a bridge in Rome once."

He looks out at the water, his smile slipping. ”I believe he promised to catch you.” 

"Well, consider that promise fulfilled." Jemma rubs her hands over her face and sighs as they shake, the adrenaline rush fading and leaving her weak and winded. One of his big hands covers hers, and she steadies. 

"You know, it was a perfect day," he says. "At least for me."

He’s looking at her, the intensity in his eyes a bright burning light that steals her breath and rekindles her hope.

"Well, perfect except for one small thing," she shakes her head as he tenses. "It ended."

His smile is blinding. She thinks, dazedly, that he should smile more. 

"I can fix that," he murmurs, leaning over to catch her lips in a salty kiss. It’s sweet, and gentle, and far too chaste for Jemma’s liking.

"Fix it faster," she growls, her still shaking hands clutching at the wet fabric of his shirt to pull him closer. "Who knows when they’ll show up to take us back."

"There’s a beacon, it will beep-"

“ _Grant_.”

"Yes, ma’am."

This time, he kisses her with all of that intensity. She answers him in kind. Lips clash and hands search and skin meets skin and by the time the rescue chopper comes, they’re not so sure they want to be saved. 

******

"I’ll talk to Coulson," he says, later, on their way to meet the team.

"I… already did," she says with a sheepish smile. "First day.  _Just_  in case.”

"In case of emergency kissing?" 

"Something like that."

"Good." He pushes a strand of hair out of her face. "I see an emergency trip to Italy in your immediate future."

She snorts at his joke, then tilts her head. It gives him a nice clear line to that soft spot on her neck and he’s leaning in when she asks, “Can Fitz come?”

He pauses. “Fitz CANNOT come.”

"Mmmm, not a good start," she teases. "He doesn’t share well."

"He’ll learn." He closes the gap and leaves a few heated kisses along the column of her neck. But then he thinks of the young engineer, ready to jump out of a plane for her, too. "Unless… you want him to come."

Her smile is wide. “We could invite Skye. Send them off to do… things.”

"Separate rooms?" He runs his hands up and down her sides, wishing for privacy and time.

She bites her lip. “Oh, definitely separate rooms.”

"Separate hotels?"

“ _Grant._ ”

He sighs. “Fine, Fitz and Skye can come.”

He doesn’t need more than her sunny smile to know it’s the right decision. Besides, he has a feeling he’s about to have an unprecedented string of perfect days. He can share a few. 


End file.
